Discussion

Soy sauce + butter = yum!

Obviously the chefs at Japanese and fusion restaurants have always known this, but I've just started cooking with the soy/butter combination more at home and it is so delicious. I started by adding some soy sauce to melted butter for popcorn, which is amazing. Of course it is good on fish, and last night I made some soba noodles and didn't have anything prepared to put on them. So I quickly sauteed some chopped garlic in butter, added lemon juice, soy sauce and sesame oil -- wonderful and so easy. Today I sprinkled seaweed/sesame sprinkle on the leftovers with shrimp for lunch.I'm sure that's how a local restaurant makes their "tofu steak" taste so good -- they just drench the tofu in soy and butter. Not the healthiest, but it works like a charm when you need a quick hit of rich flavor.

Or toss those thin beef slices with melted butter and soy sauce and eat them raw, like carpaccio. I've been eating plain rice with soy sauce and butter for as long as I can remember -- it really is a delicious combination.

I sometimes use that when I make Japanese-style pasta too (also without the sesame oil), topped with furikake, bonito flakes, and lots of black pepper. When you add mixed mushrooms like shitake and shimeji to the pasta, they soak up the sauce and become awfully succulent and tasty!

Usually I use spaghetti or linguine but prefer the latter ... just personal taste, plus it seems to "sop up" the sauce better. And the dish I make is slightly soupier (i.e. with more sauce) than the usual pasta dish. Hope you'll like it. :)

Does anybody know if the soy sauce and butter combo is common in the Ashkenazi Orthodox Jewish circle? Because after bitsubeats post about the combo on rice, I'm thinking of another Orthodox Jewish roomate who liked to eat her rice with butter and soy sauce.

Three of us mentioned that combo (without other stuff): me, kpaumer and bitsubeats. I can't speak for anyone else, but even though I'm half (non-Orthodox) Ashkenazi I don't know anyone in my family who eats rice that way so no, I don't think it's an cultural thing.

I guess I wasn't clear. I wasn't really talking about the rice but the butter soy sauce combo because one of my Orthodox Jewish roomates used to eat her pasta with butter and soy sauce and another Orthodox Jewish roomate ate her rice with butter and soy sauce. Sometimes you've got certain cultures adopting items that may seem a bit odd on the surface -- eg. Koreans and Spam.

I think it's probably just a coincidence. But if you want me to speculate wildly ... if they were Orthodox, I assume they kept kosher. Under kosher laws, you can't mix butter with meat, so perhaps the soy sauce is a kosher source of umami. Butter and soy sauce together provide a combination of flavor components similar to bacon: fat, salt, umami and what I guess could be called "cure."

i have a lot of Ashkenazi friends and family. I've never seen them do the soy/butter combo. I thought that was a Korean thing. Funny that you mention the Koreans and spam. I've always wondered how they picked up spam and just learned that it was from the American soldiers during the korean war.

Ha ha. Well, I know bitsu is half Korean and I don't think my roommates had any Korean blood in them. But that brings an interesting point. I wonder how many posters discovered somebody they already knew on these boards? I know my family once hired a contractor to find out that we were distant relatives. It can be a small world.